From LQWiki
Cable modem, n.: A modem designed to operate over cable TV lines. Because the coaxial cable used by cable TV provides much greater bandwidth than telephone lines, a cable modem can be used to achieve extremely fast access to the Internet. This, combined with the fact that millions of homes are already wired for cable TV, has made the cable modem something of a holy grail for Internet and cable TV companies.
Cable modems on Linux are easy enough to setup, and commonly will be done by default if it's connected to the PC via (usually) cat5e (ethernet) cabling.
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